Gershwin is a time traveller - you can see him out of the corner of
your eye. He did not die in the normal sense of the word, because he did not
know where he was. He was in a very high fever and dying all alone in a
hospital room after failed brain surgery. When he left his body, he experienced
extreme disorientation and for quite a while did not realize he was dead. This
meant that a light, loose Gershwin-shaped energy field still moved about the
world, and lit up whenever his music was played (which was almost all the time).
After a very long time, though it was a mere moment in eternity, he began to
realize who and how he actually was, that he was no longer in a body and would
have to exist in a very different form. Being a soul sojourner from the
beginning, this was not a threat but an adventure to him. But even in spite of
this necessary metamorphosis, to a remarkable degree, he retained a George
Gershwin shape. No matter what sort of problems he was having in his life, and
he had many that we don't know anything about, there was a ferocious
static-charged supernatural pumped boost of energy that somehow kept on
connecting people with each other when he was around. But ironically, in spite
of his sacred mission to join people joyously,in his life he had many struggles
with intimacy, which led to a loneliness even as he was the most popular man in
the room. During this strange leaving-his-body-and-not-being-sure-where-he-was
period, he began to have extraordinary insight into not just his own condition,
but the human condition. GG's emotional affect and his emotions seemed
curiously light, but there was a galaxy of melancholy within that he did not
show to too many people. The stars in that galaxy exploded out of his fingers
and his brain and were made manifest as notes of music on the page. Though he
lived at a hurtling pace few people could equal, little did he know that he was
absorbing all of humanity's travails, gaining an understanding of suffering
that would not be fully realized until he found himself in a different form
outside his body. It would have been unbearably painful, had his life (as he
knew it) not been over, a blessed cessation of all earthly pain. When a soul or
entity gains this sort of awareness, mysterious alchemy takes place because the
need here on earth for that level of understanding is so dire. Those pained and
anguished places in that broken thing we call the human condition began to draw
and attract this generous, gentle, deeply broken spirit. There was Gershwin
dust in the room sifting down like stardust, particularly when there was music
playing. And there was music playing a lot. Someone, not keeping up their
guard, felt something strange or warm and not quite familiar in the room, yet
also hauntingly familiar. Someone else thought they saw him for a second, or
someone that looked like him. There was in some subconscious way a powerful
sense that a healing was beginning to happen. As the entity begins to heal, so
it heals itself. George's brain gave way, the most disturbing way to die, so
that he was basically humbled by losing the genius brain he was celebrated for.
Stripped of that, even of that, all that was left was his essence. How can I
say how this happens? How can I be sure that George Gershwin is a time
traveller and an entity who is basically free to move about within time and
space wherever and whenever he wishes?
This is just another one of those strange things. A while ago I wrote about buying an old hard-cover copy of Colleen McCullough's novel The Thorn Birds from Amazon, and discovering that between its browned pages were sprays of flowers which had been pressed and dried, their colors still faintly apparent even after God-knows-how-many years. It made me wonder who cut these slips from their garden, and where (Australia?), and what possessed them to place them in a volume, a beloved novel I assume, and leave them there, forgotten. For that matter, why was the book sold? Had the owner passed on, faded away along with the mysterious flowers? My questions just multiplied.
But then I dug out this book - and I swear to you, I do not remember when I bought it, where I bought it, and it's just possible I got it from Amazon, meaning it was used when I got it. Maybe. But it seems to me I've had it longer than that. It's a rather dull tome which I thought I'd read again to help me get to sleep at night. Written by the controversial journalist Joan Peyser, it was considered a stick of dynamite in the music world because Peyser dared to state that Bernstein was gay. There erupted a firestorm of vehement denials, shock, horror, dread, etc., while no one even stopped to think how homophobic that particular reaction made them appear. Oh, no! they seemed to be saying. We just don't want HIM to be gay.
And speaking of. Peyser also wrote a controversial book about George Gershwin, suggesting he was at very least bisexual and certainly in no hurry to marry any woman he knew. The book was thundered at and railed at and denounced, as was Peyser, who now seemed to be a scarlet woman of musical biography. She'd have her comeuppance decades later, when a dry, scholarly tome which claimed to be The Ultimate Gershwin Biography actually quoted her book, somehow rendering her academically acceptable. (Peyser was also the first writer to posit the veracity of Alan Gershwin's claim that he was George Gershwin's illegitimate son.)
But that's not what this is all about. Neither is this clean copy of the gorgeous cover photo Peyser used, in which Gershwin's elegant narcissism is on full display. The slightly sneering "fuck-me" mouth is particularly disarming, not to mention provocative.
NO! It's about THIS.
THIS, which tumbled out of the Bernstein book as I began to flip through it in preparation for reading it (trying to find, in vain, the sexy or salacious parts).
THIS, of which I have no knowledge, no idea of its provenance. WHAT THE HELL IS IT DOING HERE? Who cut this out of the New York Times on Sunday, November 10, 1985 and taped it to a piece of green plastic with multiple pieces of Scotch tape? And why? I had no access to the New York Times then. I don't know why, if someone DID clip this out, they chose one of Lenny's more pretentious little acrostics or whatever they're called. (Like a monkey, he had a mind for puzzles.) Like the gay Copland, the gay Bernstein (who later came out as flamboyantly as one might expect) might be trying to establish his place in the pantheon of greatness by sucking up to the boss. Could that explain the enigmatic reference to "Organ of Cecilia"?
I keep finding things I don't understand! They keep falling out of books, found objects. I wondered just fleetingly if it was something my dead sister did, though why she would do something so strange, I don't know. Certainly if I had done it and given it to her, she would have called me completely insane. But she is dead now, so I don't need to worry.
But it would be nice to now what the hell this is and where it comes from. Who knows what will tumble from the next old book I open? Undiscovered Gershwin scores? Condoms? Pressed and dessicated after-dinner mints?
ADDENDA. St. Cecilia, virgin, martyr, and patron saint of music, which is why she is holding a weird sort of violin or cello. This kind of explains it, but for a virgin saint, she sure shows a lot of cleavage.
I was amazed but not surprised to see this fascinating obituary in the New York Times about the extraordinary life of Alan Gershwin, who was either an uncrowned prince cheated of his musical and financial heritage, or a complete fraud.
It surprises me that I still get comments on the blog post I did in 2015 about AG and GG (link below) and the complicated relationship they had, whether face-to-face or only in Alan's imagination. There is just no simple version of this story, and I
think it has the makings of a movie. I have heard that William Shatner has a
phantom son who keeps threatening him with exposure. So far he’s ignoring him.
I
have had a bit of a problem with his “uncanny” resemblance to GG. People see
what they want or need to see. GG was so cruelly yanked out of the world, with
so much unfinished business, that maybe a lookalike son was an emotional need
for some people. Some make their living “being” other people at parties, etc. –
professional lookalikes, and AG didn’t look any more like George than a
convincing lookalike. But then, I didn’t know him.
Some of the commenters on my
blog piece are kind of upset or even angry that I don’t just accept the reality
of AG being who he says he is. Others kind of dismiss him or talk about how
terrible his music was. Yet he’d show up at music festivals and no one would
question him. Maybe Alan Gershwin was the unlived life, the continuation in very
watered-down form of George once he prematurely dropped away.
In my unofficial
research on GG, I kept coming across stories where people would “see” him in his
old haunts after he died. He’d just appear for a moment. Elvis sighting stuff?
Could be, or just more of that desire to see someone who left too soon. I read
that Ira Gershwin whispered on his deathbed that he “saw” his brother after his
death – he waved at him cheerily from the sofa in his workroom. IG was terrified
to tell anyone lest they think he was crazy. Another time he appeared at a
player piano for a second in front of a crowd, and several people “saw” him. But
people see what they want or need to see, which is why AG went so far.
Maybe.
By George, by jing, by God-almighty, I found these Blingees in a George Gershwin file and decided they were too hokily cute not to post. I went through a Gershwin phase two or three years ago, and I can't say it's over, since it changed me. In most of them, you see The Great Man, the Gershwin who struck a pose, whether he was (supposedly) at the piano or (supposedly) talking to his girl friend. And even: See George. See George at the beach. These are ALL posed, the products of publicity, and the early ones bespeak an androgyny that I never knew existed.
Some say Gershwin was gay, others don't care (me!), others see his flexibility in who he wanted to spend time with. Kay Swift, a brilliant composer on her own, was one of his longest and closest relationships, and he dedicated the musical Oh, Kay! to her. In fact, I've always seen that title not as whimsy but as a cry from the heart.
Gershwin eventually ended up sad and frustrated by the public's unwillingness to embrace his full genius (the lamentably misunderstood Porgy and Bess). They seemed to want to push him back to Tin Pan Alley. They were simply more comfortable with the old George. He served their needs, while his true genius seethed inside him.
Meantime, a horrendous, horrible thing was slowly growing in his head: a monstrous tumour which eventually claimed him, while his doctors insisted his escalating agony and shocking disability was "psychological". So psychological that when he was in the bathroom, he fell down dead, or so close to it that helping him was impossible. I see him leaving his body, hovering around the ceiling somewhere, looking down while the impotent, idiot doctors cracked his skull open like a walnut, finding a grapefruit-sized tumour that had probably been growing there for years. A sad end for a man still in his 30s, the Mozart of his time. We still have the music, but as prodigious as his output was, it was only a tiny fragment of what he kept in his idea file, his treasure box. A box that, tragically, would not be opened until it was too late.
Love walked right in and drove the shadows away Love walked
right in and brought my sunniest day
One magic
moment, and my heart seemed to know
That love said
Hello ! ,
Though no a word
was spoken
One look and I forgot the gloom of the past One look and I
had found my future at last
One look and I
had found a world completely new,
When love walked
in... with you.
How can I explain what it's like to have a relationship with someone who isn't there?
You woke me up again, George. Or did I awaken you? You just appeared, when I was sure it was over, I'd never see you again. But when I least expected it, I felt you so near my face, so near I could almost feel your breath on me, and you said, "I'm right here."
I think you saved me from myself, or reminded me - I can do better, that I can dispense with mean-spiritedness towards anyone. I can do better. I had forgotten. It's not the sort of thing you'd do - no curses, hexes or revenge. You were not vindictive. When I feel your spirit now, it amazes me - such beauty of soul that shone through in that amazing music.
Your beauty is beyond my power to describe, but I must try. To have someone just appear - especially when others claimed it was impossible (and I no longer care if it is "just imagination", which is where I live anyway) restores my soul. And you had something to say to me which made utter sense, and I had no trouble following it at all - because it was right.
Such beauty happens just once. And yet it happens all the time. To the end of time.
I miss you so, George! And even though I know there is nothing I can do to bring you back, even though I know that lightning never strikes twice and I lost you before I even knew I had you, even though forces have conspired to keep us apart that I never could have dreamed of, even though you have been denied and I have been denied by a power of negativity that is now mysteriously obliterated - even in the midst of all this madness and confusion, I miss you, I will love you always, and look forward to that blessed day when you will cross barriers of time and space and walk through walls to be with me again.
Ah, those days: the days of Johnny Larue and William B. and Dr. Tongue and all the other surreal characters taken over by John Candy. For the characters didn't take him over - it was the other way around. He invaded them and became.
Johnny LaRue, the chimney-smoking, booze-swilling, dame-exploiting would-be politician of Melonville was one of my favorites. In this clip he pitches himself as a candidate for City Council, and even that untidy flop of hair is reminiscent of Donald Trump, along with all the ranting bullshit.
But LaRue had a signature phrase he used in every sketch: "And I'm not gay!" I was reminded of this when I opened my email this morning and found a comment from someone about my Alan Gershwin post (which got a good response, believe me, in light of the 13 views I get for some of them). The reader vehemently denied any suggestion that either George or Alan Gershwin was gay. This is typical of the indignant, deeply insulted, even infuriated tone of people who perceive any such suggestion in biographies of famous (and usually it's) men. Lost and Found: the mystery of Alan Gershwin
No one ever thinks - it doesn't occur to them even for a moment - that their fury reveals the slightest degree of homophobia. But even a suggestion the person in question MIGHT have been gay is automatically seen as vicious slander which has to be vigorously denied and argued into the ground. No, he was NOT "one of those". There is no EVIDENCE he was "one of those". He had hair on his chest, for God's sake! Don't defile his good name like that!
What???
I'm not defiling anything or anyone when I say there were suggestions that Gershwin might have been gay. Most of his biographers (including Howard Pollack, who wrote a definitive 885-page doorstop) have pondered the fact without coming to any hard conclusions. In Gershwin's rarefied world, being gay or bisexual was not the big and horrifying deal it was in the general populace. Aaron Copland, David Diamond, Samuel Barber, and many other movers-and-shakers of composerhood were gay, some of them quite openly. It was an arts-saturated environment, and its most celebrated figures seemed to believe they were above convention.
It doesn't matter to me if Gershwin was gay, bisexual or a racehorse (though he was certainly that). But what interests me is the utter fury with which people deny and denounce such "accusations", even if they're stated as mere surmise. I'm apparently attempting to throw mud at an icon, drag him down into the slime. Hey, wait a minute!
I did a piece on Nietsche not long ago, and the same "accusations" came up in his biographical material, along with that same strident, near-hysterical denial. It's a lie! He had a girl friend in university once and took her to the Philosopher's Ball! The implication is that I'm giving him a black eye just to be spiteful. And, of course, getting my facts wrong. All wrong. This reminds me of that classic Seinfeld episode where, whenever the issue of gayness came up, the mantra was, "Not that there's anything wrong with that." Denial of the denial? Let's begin the beguine.
And Cole Porter? Are you kidding? And Noel Coward, let's not forget him. Gay! Gay! Yes, I'm going to ruin their reputations right here and now by saying they loved men (which is obviously a horrific crime - it goes without saying, doesn't it).
Huh??
Come on, people. The suggestion that some great literary or musical figure might have been gay is not automatically slander. In expressing that view, you're revealing a small and very homophobic mind. But your small-mindedness is such that you don't even see it, or at least won't admit it.
"Oh, I knew someone who was gay once and he was a real nice fella." But he's not Gershwin. Or Cole Porter. Or Johnny LaRue.
Imagine these same people were claiming, vehemently and furiously, "he was NOT black!", "he was NOT disabled!', "he did NOT have PTSD!", or any other sensitive categories, and these same people would be horrified. It's OK to be those things now - maybe - supposedly. Or not, but we have to say so, even if we don't believe it. (Though, think about it. A hundred years ago, would it have been acceptable to claim that some important/famous white figure "might have" had black lineage? Think of the outcry, the insistence he was blonde and got a suntan, or something equally ludicrous.)
But why then isn't it OK for Nietsche or Gershwin or any other major figure to be gay or bisexual (bisexual being a category that seems to have been lost in the shuffle, the implication being, for God's sake, make up your mind! Being on the fence like that is oh-so-politically incorrect, even disloyal to the cause.) Sexual orientation still seems to be fraught with confusion. If a man gets married at any time in his life, and (especially) if he fathers a child, he's "not gay". The assumption is, a gay man would not touch his wife with a ten-foot pole. She would remain chaste and pure for 25 years while he pulled out the bodybuilding magazines he kept under his mattress.
People's minds are still in brontosaurus mode. They're stuck, and their thinking is very dusty. Is social change just hurtling along too fast, or what? Is this trapped-in-amber mode of thinking just simple physics: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction?
Whatever. They piss me off! So Gershwin was gay. Or might have been. Does that take away anything at all from his contribution to music? In some distant universe, not this one, we might even see it as a positive attribute, something that adds to the richness and complexity of that extreme rarity, the blazing miracle of creative genius.
BONUS POST. This is the piece I kept finding during my GershQuest of last year.
Michael Feinstein’s book on the Gershwins called, sensibly, “The Gershwins and Me” (Simon & Schuster) was published in October. While he was still working in piano bars, Feinstein got to know Ira Gershwin intimately, cataloguing his collection of records, unpublished sheet music and rare recordings in the Gershwin home over a period of six years.
The gay or not gay question has floated about George Gershwin even during the more restrained time when he was a young composer. It is an issue Feinstein tackles in his book. America’s National Public Radio asked him about it:
So many speculated that George Gershwin was gay because he never got married. And somebody once said to Oscar Levant, you know, George is bedding all those women because he’s trying to prove he’s a man. And Oscar Levant said: What a wonderful way to prove it. There have always been rumours circulating about George’s sexuality, and I addressed it because so many people have asked me about it, and it’s important to the gay community to identify famous personalities as being gay. In the case of George, it’s all rather mysterious because I never encountered any man who claimed to have a relationship with George, but a lot of innuendo.
Yet Simone Simon said that she thought that Gershwin must be gay because when they were on a trip together, he never laid a hand on her, she said.
Cecelia Ager, who was a very close friend of George’s and whose husband Milton Ager was George’s roommate, once at the dinner said, well, of course, you know, George was gay, and Milton said: Cecilia, how can you say that, how can you say that? And she just looked at him and said: Milton, you don’t know anything. But when I asked her about it, she wouldn’t talk about it. So it still remains a mystery.
My own theory is that I think that the thing that mattered most to George was his music. I think he could have been confused sexually. I don’t know. I think that he had trouble forming a lasting relationship.
Kitty Carlisle talked about how George asked her to marry him, but she said that she knew that he wasn’t deeply in love with her. But she fit the demographic of what his mother felt would be the right woman for him.
This is an extract of NPR’s long talk with Michael Feinstein.
Photo: left to right, George Gershwin, Michael Feinstein, Ira Gershwin
NOTE: here is the Cambridge Dictionary's definition of innuendo:
Here we touch on the interesting issue of "unpleasant" being juxtaposed with "sexual", which opens up a whole new can of worms: that there's something unsavory and reputation-destroying about sex itself, unless it takes place in the heterosexual/marital bed, infrequently, in the missionary position. And only when you want a kid.
(The following is a piece from the New York Times which caught my eye, then dragged me right in. It's pretty long, but I had to reproduce it here in its entirety. It illustrates a crucial point about art: remove one element, or change it, and the whole work is changed in subtle or not-so-subtle ways. This whole story reminds me of the famous gaffe by the art gallery that hung a painting upside-down and didn't notice it for 30 years.)
It
is one of the most famous pieces of American music — but for 70 years
orchestras may have been playing one of its best-known effects wrong.
The work is George Gershwin’s
jaunty, jazzy symphonic poem “An American in Paris,” and the effect
involves a set of instruments that were decidedly not standard equipment
when it was written in 1928: French taxi horns, which honk in several
places as the music evokes the urban soundscape that a Yankee tourist
experiences while exploring the City of Light.
The question is what notes should those taxi horns play. In something of a musicological bombshell, a coming critical edition of the works of George and Ira Gershwin being prepared at the University of Michigan will argue that the now-standard horn pitches — heard in the classic 1951 movie musical with Gene Kelly, in leading concert halls around the world, and eight times a week on Broadway in Christopher Wheeldon’s acclaimed stage adaptation — are not what Gershwin intended.
The
finding promises to divide musicians, and could require
instrument-makers, sellers and renters — who now offer sets of tuned
taxi horns specifically for “An American in Paris” — to consider
investing in new sets tuned to the new notes. The change would give a
subtle, but distinctly different, cast to a classic score that was
influenced by some of the leading composers of its day, and which
followed in the footsteps of other works that employed so-called “found”
instruments, including Satie’s 1917 ballet “Parade,” which uses a typewriter and gunshots, and Frederick Converse’s 1927 “Flivver Ten Million,” an ode to the Ford automobile, which uses car horns.
“I have a feeling that percussionists are going to be somewhat put out
by this whole conclusion,” said Mark Clague, the editor in chief of the
critical edition, who attended some test performances of the revised score by the Reno Philharmonic last month.
The
ambiguity stems from how the taxi horn parts are notated in Gershwin’s
original handwritten score. To put it in Gershwin terms, we got rhythm:
The score shows that the horns play sets of accented eighth notes. But
when it comes to pitch, things are less clear. Gershwin’s score labels
the four taxi horns with a circled “A,” a circled “B,” a circled “C” and
a circled “D.” Those circled letters have been interpreted as
indicating which note each horn should play — A, B, C and D on the scale
— since at least 1945, when Arturo Toscanini used those pitches in
recording the piece with the NBC Symphony Orchestra.
This is the original version recorded in 1929 under Gershwin's supervision. Take note of the sound of those taxi horns!
But
the new critical edition will argue that Gershwin’s circled letters
were merely labels specifying which horns to play, not which notes. Mr.
Clague, an associate professor of musicology at the University of Michigan,
mentioned that Gershwin handpicked taxi horns to buy during his 1928
trip to Paris, and that friends and colleagues recalled that he had been
particular about which notes they played. Mr. Clague also pointed to
the evidence of a Victor recording
of “An American in Paris” that was made in 1929, under Gershwin’s
supervision and presumably using his horns: The taxi horns on that
recording sound a more atmospheric, more dissonant set of notes: A flat,
B flat, a much higher D, and lower A.
Gershwin’s
original instruments seem to have been lost. Michael Strunsky, 81, a
nephew of Ira Gershwin and trustee of his estate, said in a telephone
interview that his father, William English Strunsky,
had played the taxi horns when George Gershwin first gave an informal
recital of the piece for the family in 1928 after sailing back from
Europe.
“I
went looking for those taxi horns once,” Mr. Strunsky said. “And
somewhere in the moves back and forth, and this and that and the other
thing, they disappeared.”
Russ Knutson, the owner of Chicago Percussion Rental
in Illinois, who rents out tuned horns for “An American in Paris” and
has played them on occasion, said in an interview that he thought that
the currently accepted A, B, C and D pitches “fit exactly in the score.”
“The
whole country and the whole world have been oriented to doing it with
those four pitches,” he said in a telephone interview. “All of the
recordings you’ve heard are with those four pitches.”
But
Trey Wyatt, a percussionist with the San Francisco Symphony who
estimated that he had played the horn parts 40 or 50 times, and who
rents out several sets through his company, California Percussion Rental, said that he was intrigued by the finding.
“If this new tuning takes off, I may have to buy another five sets of these horns,” he said.
Rob
Fisher, the musical score adapter and supervisor of the new staging of
“An American in Paris” currently on Broadway, said that he agreed that
the A, B, C and D labels were names and not pitches, but that the show
had ended up using the standard horns.
But
he questioned whether the pitches used in the Victor recording should
be taken as gospel. “I don’t ever want to say what was in somebody’s
mind,” he said. “Were those the four horns that made him the happiest
that day, when he was picking horns? I just feel like if he’d wanted
exact pitches for his horns, he was really good about writing down
intentions.”
Mr.
Clague said that between the 1929 recording that Gershwin supervised
and the 1945 Toscanini recording, which seemed to help establish a new
performance tradition, there was great variation in how the taxi horns
were played. But he said that his musical analysis gave weight to the
idea that the pitches used in the 1929 Victor recording work best.
“George was thinking harmonically and melodically with the taxi horns,”
he said. “It’s not just a sound effect.”
But
he added that there would have been an easy way of avoiding the
ambiguity entirely. “I think George would have saved everybody a lot of
trouble,” he said, “if he had just numbered them ‘1,’ ‘2,’ ‘3,’ and ‘4’
rather than ‘A,’ ‘B,’ ‘C’ and ‘D.’”
Blogger's Observations. I decided I'd do this whole thing by ear, as a sort of auditory blind taste test. I'd try to determine which version was the "true" one: the one we currently hear in concert halls and have been hearing for 70 years, or the first recording ever made in 1929, supervised by Gershwin himself.
I've been listening to An American in Paris since I was a wee tot, and I even remember my mother explaining to me that it used real taxi horns, which I thought was pretty strange. I'm not a musician, but I was saturated in music from the get-go, surrounded by real musicians, and by inheritance came in with the same equipment, meaning a pretty sharp ear. So I sat back and just plugged myself in to the sound, going back in time to that 78 r.p.m. record made in 1929.
The very first blast on the first taxi-horn made me sit bolt-upright and yell, "AAAAHHH!" It was completely different, a totally different sound! The blasts that came after that were even more of a revelation: lower, earthier, more dissonant, with the odd higher note to add harmonics (for Gershwin heard music in noise: he said so all the time). These sounds were just so much more. . . Gershwiny.
I am utterly convinced that these are the taxi horns Gershwin originally used. These are the horns he collected while in Paris, scrounging around in auto shops and junk stores, then picking four out of a couple of dozen to match his score - no, wait. It's bigger than that. THE SCORE WAS MATCHED TO THE HORNS. The two came together like a hand in glove.
You wonder how orchestras could've gotten it so wrong for so long. To write A, B, C and D and circle them is pretty obviously a way to label each horn, not describe the horn's tone. It's just self-evident, isn't it?
Now people are saying they wish Gershwin hadn't been so "ambiguous". He was a genius, people, and geniuses are ambiguous by nature, leaving the rest of us snail-brains in the dust. Now some percussionists, suffering from defensiveness and hurt pride and unable to admit they may have been wrong, are insisting WE had it right all along, and Gershwin had it wrong. Or that it didn't matter. Or that, when making the original 1929 recording, he just picked out the horns he happened to want on that particular day, pulled them out of the junk pile pretty much at random.
DON'T MAKE ME SCREAM.
Gershwin was an utter perfectionist. He never took stabs at things, not even improvising. It was from God's mouth to his ear/fingers. His scores were as immaculate as Mozart's, not a note out of place. He wouldn't just rummage around in his junk drawer and pull out a few taxi horns.
The problem is, he did not happen to consider that people would not know how to reproduce those exact sounds in the years and decades to come. Perhaps he believed it was self-evident and that they couldn't possibly get it wrong. So somebody took a flying-leap guess based on some letters with circles around them on the score (and if the piece is in the key of A, it obviously would have a great big circle drawn around the A. Isn't that how you tell what key something is in?), and thus the whole thing became standardized.
I want to keep listening to that original recording, except that it makes me want to cry. Gershwin went through so much in his short, sometimes very painful life: his masterpiece Porgy and Bess was cut by about a third for its first performance (though most operas more than exceed its original length); the critics slung mud at it and called it garbage. He was a sensitive soul and he DID care what people thought, though artists aren't supposed to. And then he died at 38, and in so much agony, essentially alone.
So for God's sake, people. Get those taxi horns right! It's the least you can do for poor George.
This is THE hardest Gershwin song to perform, because nobody understands what it's about.
I traced the roots of it down to an obscure 1931 movie called Delicious. It was George and Ira Gershwin's first attempt to write songs for the silver screen, although their initial wild burst of enthusiasm soon collapsed like a ruined souffle.
It almost immediately became apparent to them that their talents really weren't required at all. Hollywood demanded the kind of generic love song that any idiot could tunelessly hum, not giving a good goddamn WHAT the words were because what difference does it make anyway? No one remembers them. And the simpler and more mind-numbing the tune, the easier it is to whistle as you leave the theatre.
"I should live so long," George lamented near the end of his life, "that Sam Goldwyn should say to me, why can't you write hits like Irving Berlin?"
The brothers got a bit of their own back with this pointy little gem, but nobody seems to get it in performance. There are a number of gorgeously operatic versions on YouTube which are just as ridiculous as ALL gorgeously operatic versions of smart-ass, snappy satire. In other words, it hits the floor with a double-clunk.
They are oversung, overacted, and just WRONG. Meanwhile, there is a whole crop of performances that make me wince: the singer rolls his/her eyes and looks panicky with each "blah blah blah", as if to say: gosh, I've forgotten the words!
As was always the case, George and Ira knew exactly what they were doing. And if the audience wasn't in on the joke, if they just saw it as a silly little thing with no lyrics, so much the better.
Or perhaps they thought: George and Ira Gershwin. I wonder what all the fuss is about? These gentlemen can't write songs at all.
This fellow, Andrey Stolyarov, stands a little awkwardly and might sell the thing a bit more adeptly, but vocally he's perfect, with a slight nasal quality that puts all those "blahs" over with a distinctly Gershwinesque flair. Here is his YouTube channel, which I intend to dip into with pleasure:
This is a literal translation from a lovely site called Russian Culture. It's one of the best "Life of Gershwin" pieces I've seen because the prose is so delightfully wonky. It's as if you can hear someone with a heavy Russian accent telling the story with great enthusiasm. I omitted the original photos because we've seen them all before, and tried to substitute something slightly more imaginitive.
Russian Jewish heritage George Gershwin. September 26, 1898 in New York City in a family of immigrants from Russia, was born a boy Yasha. The whole world knows him as George Gershwin – self-taught musician of the 20th century and the King of Broadway and Hollywood musicals.
Gershwin came from Russian Jewish heritage. His grandfather, Jakov Gershowitz, had served for 25 years as a mechanic for the Imperial Russian Army. He retired near Saint Petersburg. His teenage son, Moishe Gershowitz, worked as a leather cutter for women’s shoes; Moishe fell in love with Rosa Bruskin, the teenage daughter of a Saint Petersburg furrier. Bruskin moved with her family to New York, she Americanized her first name to Rose. Moishe, faced with compulsory military service in Russia, followed Rose as soon as he was able.
George Gershwin grew up a tomboy street, to say, a bully, and also studied badly! “Lord, what comes out of this boy!” – pathetically exclaimed dad Gershovich. Everything suddenly changed when at a concert in the school Yasha first heard the famous violinist Max Rosenzweig. One and a half hour after a concert George was waiting for the soloist, ignoring the pouring rain, having found that he had gone the other way, rushed to his home.
They became friends. “Max introduced me to the world of music” – recalled the composer. At the home of Rosenzweig George taught himself to play the piano by ear picking popular tunes. The parents repeatedly tried to hire teachers to him, but George couldn’t get along with them. He remained self-taught.
At 15, George Gershwin found work as a pianist-accompanist at the publishing house “Remick & Co”. Soon he entered theatrical circles, and in 1918 presented his first musical on Broadway. It all ended in failure, however, the young man was not discouraged. He literally filled up Broadway producers with his works. Finally, in 1924, George Gershwin was lucky. Musical on his music, «Lady, Be Good» has become a real Broadway hit. For this show Gershwin wrote the song, which many consider to be one of the best love ballads of the 20th century – «The Man I love».
By the way, this song, like almost all the songs and musicals of George Gershwin, were written on verses of his older brother Ira – a professional poet and writer. “Rhapsody in Blue” and the musical «Lady, Be Good» brought good money. This allowed the family to move out of the provincial district to their own five-story building at 103 Street and George – a journey through Europe. In Paris, he met the famous French composer Maurice Ravel, and even tried to persuade the master to give him a few lessons in composition: – But why study? – Asked Ravel. – You’re already famous. How much do you earn? – One hundred thousand dollars a year – sheepishly replied Gershwin. – Awesome! – Exclaimed Ravel – then I’d have to take lessons from you!
From a trip to Europe Gershwin returned with a sketch of the symphonic poem “An American in Paris.” It was sung in the Philharmonic Society of New York and happily forgotten. Many of the brothers Gershwin tunes were later used for writing songs. Well, in 1951, when George was no longer in the world, director Vincente Minnelli made a wonderful musical “An American in Paris” by Gershwin brothers songs. “An American in Paris” is still consistently ranks in the top five films of musicals of all time. By the way, the musical features one more hit of Gershwin «The Foggy Day» They say that time puts everything in its place! Today George Gershwin is recognized genius of the 20th century. However, praise and serious musicological articles and books obscure the image of Gershwin – cheerful, amorous, thoughtless man, besides a brilliant storyteller and inveterate wit. And, of course, Gershwin never married, he was Don Juan. His affair with actress Paulette Goddard (whom he begged to leave her husband Charlie Chaplin), a French film star Simone, beautiful dancer Margaret Manners, Marguerite Eriksen, Kay Swift, Mollie Charleston – were the main topics of gossip at the time. However, numerous romances, according to Gershwin, were the main source of his inspiration. Generally, in the twenties and thirties Gershwin created musicals one after the other.
Many people are still arguing about the genre of the work. What is this, an opera or a musical? Or maybe something else? It is, of course, the “Porgy and Bess” – A masterpiece by George Gershwin. However, the composer said: “The main thing that the public liked, and genre … the genre is not important.” Gershwin’s life ended abruptly and tragically. What began with a simple headache, suddenly turned into a chronic and serious disease. When Gershwin began to forget the whole parts of his works, his friends and relatives advised to go to the doctor, who diagnosed a “brain tumor” and advised surgery. The surgeon, specializing in transactions of this kind, was on his way to California to save the life of his illustrious patient, but he was too late -11 July 1937, George Gershwin died
His music still sounds in Broadway shows, Hollywood George Gershwin. His songs are still big hits. Additional facts from Russian Wikipedia: One of the hobbies of Gershwin was drawing. Gershwin was in love with Alexandra Blednykh – she was his best pupil. Gershwin never married, but he had an only son. Alan Gershwin (b. 1926) was the son of George Gershwin and showgirl Margaret (“Mollie”) Manners. Paul Mueller, Gershwin’s valet, recounts trips made by Gershwin to visit Margaret and the boy, and says that he had no doubt the boy was his son. He also recalls trips made late at night, “undercover,” to the boys home in California. Alan Gershwin recalls receiving regular visits from his famous father growing up, and he received envelopes of cash with each visit to help support him. Peyser provides convincing evidence and reports that Alan Gershwin was actually Gershwin’s son – although the Gershwin family still denies it. Peyser suggests that Ira and Leonore denied Alan’s claims in order to keep him out of George’s inheritance, but once paid him $300 K to keep quiet and leave them alone. (from Joan Peyser’s account of George Gershwin in “The Memory of All That”)
